Open for Business has held its first annual
OfB Open Choice Awards and KDE 3.0 has won in the categoryBest Desktop Environment:
"If the KDE Project had been content to stick with KDE 2.x, this may very
well have been GNOME's year to shine. Unfortunately for the younger project, KDE
moved forward at such a rapid pace this year, some people thought the project's
development process might crumble under its own weight. It did not, and KDE 3.0
emerged as the most polished, professional desktop available for Unix and
Unix-like systems."

The KDE mail client KMail won in the categoryBest E-mail Client and KDE's integrated development environmentKDevelop won in the categoryBest Development Tool.Kopete, KDE's multi-protocol messaging client, won an honourable mention in the categoryBest Communications Software.

Comments

Those screenshots are _not_ how the actual fileselector will look like, they are just early concepts of volunteers. There is a lot of talk about it and many ideas are shared. You can be sure though, that the result won't be packed with features and stuff. While this looks cool, sometimes the "rudimentary" stuff is much faster to use. I don't think that the fileselector should be more complicated than the actual filemanager.

As for browsers and such, it's fine if Konqueror suits you best.
Personally I prefer Galeon because of it's browser-centric interface and the excellent Gecko engine. RAM usage is indeed quite high so this might be a deciding point for people low on RAM or just picky about it. I don't think there is a point in arguing about which one is the best but both can certainly do the job.

Galeon indeed looks like very interesting. I lik eit simple interface and do not miss Mozilla's XUL...
Some major concerns for me about Mozilla:
* printing (which is unfortunately sucks)
Note that I need to print *in Cyrillic*, and Mozilla/OpenOffice/Gnome are far behind KDE in this respect
* missing AA, font installation mechanism is obviously missing as well
* slow startup/exit speed (but I already mentioned this)

Conformance to W3C standards is quite good in recent Mozilla builds, so there is no point to complain here.

As about Gecko vs. Konqueror - I believe we should compare Gecko with KHTML.
KHTML itself is very lightweight, and I would love if someone with make XUL browser based on KHTML, or GTK2-based browser based on KHTML (like Galeon is based on Gecko)

Hmm printing in cyrillic should get better with Pango and such but I don't know, I don't own a printer.
AA will be there soon when the Gtk2 port and Galeon are ready.
Slow startup speed isn't really a concern anymore, Galeon starts pretty fast and when it's loaded once, subsequent loads are _extremely_ fast.
Exit time is definetly fast. =)

As for Gtk2 based KHTML browser, this would be a major hassle, most probably much more difficult than a Gecko based Gtk browser and it would feel less integrated. So there is no real point not just a Qt based KHTML browser (like Konqueror or Konq-embedded).

Also buying new 64MB of RAM would be much cheaper than doing all the work just to get a browser that is a little bit lower on RAM usage. =)

More trouble with GPG?
How many people did you ask? - i followed the instructions that came with evolution and set up GPG (having never used it before) in less than five minutes - and it signs/encrypts emails fine. I tried to do the same with Kmail and it failed miserably - I gave up after a few hours.

Give the guy a break, he took time out to write his opinion. I personaly may disagree with some of the things he wrote, but there comes a time when people sit on the side line and flame a little too much when someone expresses their opinion or creates a peice of software for GNU (what happens soon as they intoduce the product they have taken "THEIR" "PERSONAL TIME" to produce they get flames instead of thanks. ie to much negative & not enough positive.

Any chance of expanding a bit on the problems you found with evolution? I haven't found any problems myself since 1.0ish and haven't really heard of problems with it from others - so it would be interesting to hear what the problems were (installation maybe?). Despite that, i know of many people who don't use evolution, but either because they don't like the idea of an Outlook clone, or because they think the extra functionality must make it slower. So well done to kmail, but a thumbs down to the dodgy reasoning.
How good GNOME 2 worked for you is likely to vary depending on which distro you install it ontop of at the moment (because none of them have itegrated it into a release yet - normally I'd recommend waiting for your distro of choice to include it, or for ximian to package a 2.0 release for your distro) - This seems also to be the case with KDE, i've never had a good experience of KDE on Redhat (Despite the rest of redhat being excellent), i have however KDE running well on other distro's like Suse but found the distro lacking in certain areas (and the GNOME and enlightenment packages to be far less reliable). So when shortlisting for awards or writing reviews i'd suggest that you make a quick note of which distribution (or preferably distributions) that you tested on.

I've been using Evolution since 1.0.1 (I'm now using 1.0.8). I started using it because I had used KMail at the time and didn't think it was as mature as Evolution. I've just recently looked at KMail included in KDE3.0.1 and have completely taken that thought back, I'll give you my specific reasons for this.

1. Fonts- the fonts and sizes used in Evolution are controlled by gnome/gtk. Since I can't for the life of me get gtk1.x to display AA and TTF fonts as well as they look in KDE this is a major problem. It also bothers me that i can't easily select what fonts are used in what parts of Evolution(folder list, headers, message body, etc). This is something I am able to do in KMail. I can tell it what font and size for what area, and like my other KDE applications they look good. I also noticed after updating one of the gtk html libraries I can no longer CTRL-+ and CTRL-- to change font sizes within an email. This is annoying....

2. Crashing/Xinerama- I lumped these two together, but basically it is this. I've had Evolution crash on me a lot. For sometimes what appears to be random reasons. I'll try to open up an email and it crashes, reload Evolution open the same mail with no problems. I don't know if this happens in KMail, but I have two friends that use it that I have talked to and neither said they have had this problem. Xinerama support is also very poor. This seems to be something common with gtk1.x apps. Evolution at first, when launched with Xinerama in use, would barely load, would sometimes not load the folder list, would always crash when showing email with html formatting and/or attachments, and similar with my contacts list. Then I updated some gtk libraries to see if they fixed it, and I now have a 50/50 shot of it working when doing any of these things. This is a real annoyance, something with Evolution specificly (since Gaim and Mozilla seem fine) and with X applications in general(xinerama support is something that linux needs to improve on to reach the level of usability of ms-Windows). With KMail, I haven't noticed these problems(though I've had limited use of it in this environment so far).

3. Contacts list- I love the contacts list, when I used to use windows I used Outlook for contacts, and I love that Evolution uses the same model. I like the method of display and the "cards" method of editing the contacts. But here Evolution falls far short of Outlook. The display of the contacts requires the width to be set so that you can fully read some of the entires you desire. I have yet to find a way to get this width setting to stick to what i change it to. So everytime I go to my contacts list, I have to change it. VERY ANNOYING, and something you'd think would have been implemented before 1.x. Another annoying thing, is that I like to have subfolders under contacts to seperate business, friends, family, etc. But if I do this, I cannot use autocomplete for email address' that are not in the main contacts folder when writing an email. Another simple thing that should have been implemented a long time ago. Now, here KMail differs. I really don't like the address book layout used by KDE, but this is a minor inconvenience(or change) that I'll have to deal with to solve my other problems).

4. mail queue/mail send- I like to go through my email, write responses and queue my email then send it all at once, this helps since as I write something I can think of something I forgot in an other email, go back and edit it, etc. Its something I've done since using Eudora as my email client back in windows(I'd kill for a Eudora version for qt/KDE). Evolution makes this difficult as I have to go to "offline" mode write my emails then go back to online mode to send them. Eudora and KMail both support queue message as the default for composing email, and the option to not send email when checking email. This lets me take 2 hours to write my email messages and still be able to check my email without sending any of my old email. Its something simple, and for finicky people like me, but its an option Eudora and KMail have(and I beleive some other clients as well) that I find usefull.

5. CTRL-Enter sends email messages. I HATE THIS. absolutely hate it. I have a tendency to sometimes press CTRL-Enter accidentaly when typing(prbly because I'm used to using this feature in GAIM as the send button sequence, so I sometimes press it at the end of a sentence instead of just pressing enter alone). KMail defaults to this, but with the handy ability to configure the shortcut keys I can turn it off. Anyway, naturally this causes Evolution to send the message, which combined with the above problem makes for double emails to a lot of people. This leads me to my next complaing...

6. Poor configuration/options- Evolution has a poor set of configuration options for features. I've touched on this a couple times before, but I think it needs its own list number. There seems to be in the gtk thought of programing the thought that users want less options. I hate this. Its one of the main reasons I like KDE more than Gnome. Gnome/Gnome Apps have 10% of the configuration options that KDE/KDE apps have. I think the only GTK app I've used that does not follow this thought is GAIM, as it has quite a good set of options, I always seem to find an option for what I'm looking for in GAIM, definitly not true in Evolution, and not true in the other GTK apps I can think of. In going through KMail I noticed this like other KDE apps, seems to have more options than i sometimes know what to do with. But at the same time, they are laid out such that what I'm looking for is easy to find and not complicated in wording.

This is pretty much my list of complaints as I can remember them right now. One thing I do think KMail needs to change(or I just don't see the option for it) is in-document spell checking. I like this feature, it lets me quickly spell check a document as I often mistype words(which is probably evident in this post, so please don't flame me for it =). I like that Evolution does this, though I wish Evolution would display a list of the closest matches when i right click instead of forcing me to load the full spell check window instead...

I'll try and expand on any of these if you guys like, and if you know how to fix any of this in Evolution, PLEASE PLEASE tell me. I hate to have to switch with such poor thoughts of Evolution. Anyway, I'm going to start converting my email from Evolution to KMail in the next couple days, and unfortunately have yet to find a program that will do it for me so I have to do it by hand =(

Well...you *could* you the gdkxft applet - but its dodgy at best. GTK 1.x apps do not have support for AA.

This changes with GTK 2 though - take a look at a GNOME 2 desktop - beautiful :) Also, Evolution will be ported to GTK 2 sometime later this year.

I believe multihead support is going to be added (completely - as in during the design stage) to G2D.

Have you submitted the keybings issues, the contact list problems etc. to the evolution bugzilla? (you should try file a usability issue) They *will* look through it and being as its flagged usability - they'll consider it very seriouly.

Re: Options. Actually, I think you'll find that its only power users who take advanatge of those myriads of options ;) But - if you feel an option is *really* warranted and it does have a place - file a bug, make it known...

I have looked at GTK2/Gnome2 and have some of the libraries installed. Though right now I only have 1 program that is ported(Pan) that i use(i do use the gtk2 version of it). I'm waiting for the Gaim rewrite that I've been *hearing* about(they are rewriting it as shellable interface with a gtk2 shell as default but it will be open for a qt shell too, which should be amazingly cool). I will look at Evolution again when it is ported to GTK2.

Yes, I have submitted bug/usability reports to them. I did it around 1.0.3, still haven't seen anything =(

Its not that I will never look at Evolution again in the future, its just that right now KMail does everything I need an email client to do.

I just wish they could share mail directories so I could switch back and forth easily =)

As these are both Free Software projects, the developers should come together and decide to use a common mail directory/format. This would make it simple for endusers to switch without having to setup servers.

Yea, it would be nice if all email programs could use the same Mail folder layout. While they all use mbox in some form, they handle directories and indexing differently. It would be nice if they could come up with a common format for doing this.

Are you talking about automatic spellchecking with underlining misspelled words? Then you are correct. KMail currently doesn't support this.

Or are you talking about manual spellchecking? If this is the case, then you might want to try Edit->Spellchecking...
I added a button for this to the toolbar of my composer for quick access. The next version of KMail (in KDE 3.1) will even ignore quoted text so that you don't have to manually ignore all the spelling errors of your correspondents. ;-)

Or do you probably want a "check spelling of this word/selected text" action? I can't remember a corresponding wish in our bug report system. So you might want to submit one.

I also wish i could print my address book info.... but thats KAddressbook. which needs LOTS of work and is a whole 'nother rant. Anyone know of a addressbook program for KDE3 that supports vcards, has importing and exporting and can display the information in a method similar to evolution and outlook that doesn't require some odd MySQL or other database system to run along side of it?

As far as fonts are concerned, on kmail with KDE3.0 I could not find any way to change the fonts of HTML mails. Normal mails look great, with large readable fonts I can adjust, but HTML mails have fonts so small I can barely read them.
In konqueror for kde3.0, I found that I could not get it to display AA fonts on some websites (notably www.kde.org) while on others it displayed superb fonts, (such as the dot). I did not notice this in previous versions of konqueror.
These are my only complaints about KDE3.0, apart from the memory and speed which is slow on mandrake 8.1.

All software was tested at least with Mandrake 8.2, save OEone which comes with its own light version of RedHat 7.1 (and of course SuSE, which was tested on itself ;-)).

RE: problems with Evolution. This awards article was a several month endevor of testing software, so I can't quite remember, but I believe Evolution was crashing while viewing the inbox. I also believe I had some trouble with the setup wizard. Finally, while I didn't test that specific function, my esteemed OfB colleague Steven Hatfield was unable to get GPG working on it (and he knows GPG very well). Whenever he would send a GPG message using Evolution, it would only include a partial signiture. He tested on SuSE 7.2, IIRC.

True...GNOME 2 at this point is rough around the edges. I would expect it to be. The developers themselves have stated that it is a 'development version'. People wanted to see that GNOME 2 was indeed real and didn't want to wait forever. Gnome 2.2 will have all the major apps ported over, the rest of the user visible and usability changes pushed in and much better integration :)

What is interesting though is that you stated that GNOME 2 was unstable. I find that...interesting. For me, it is most certainly *very* solid. Were you relying on distro supplied packages? Those are a bit iffy at the moment.

It allows you to build a GNOME 2 system in a completely self contained location. By this I mean that you can create an account (testuser for example) and build your G2D in there. When you're done, delete your GARNOME directory and your system is the same as it was...

I've been using GARNOME for months now and to be quite honest have never experienced instability like you've stated.

I wanted to try GNOME 2.0 as soon as it came out, and MDK didn't have packages for 8.2 at the time (I don't know if they do now), so I used GARNOME. The dl/install system that is GARNOME is absolutely beautiful. I love it. However the system I ended up with crashed on almost every control panel option, and I believe I even had nautilus crash as well. IIRC, even the bug reporter crashed on me! :-\

Disappointing to say the least, but I'm looking forward to grabbing the next Mandrake 9.0 beta, which ought to have a good version of GNOME 2 in it.

The Mandrake 9.0 Beta has a good version of GNOME 2. But, I (personally - opinion only) believe that Red Hat has the better default setup of GNOME 2. The limbo isos were removed from the servers (they're probably going to release another one very soon). The GNOME 2 integration in RedHat is...wow!

It has been nice talking to you. Although I may not fully agree with your choices, you have responded very reasonably - I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing your review of GNOME 2.2. I agree, having to powerful desktops on Linux would be very nice :)

For RH it is extremely difficult to change it's mind after that (long ago) decision not to use KDE but Gnome. Money may be a reason (call it return on investment or whatever). Leave it to RH... as this is a totally valid point not to support KDE or even to try to use your own market strength (distro) to demolish KDE with knowingly buggy KDE releases distributed with RH..

Why *should* RedHat contribute? RedHat *distributes* KDE and that's all that matters. They provide KDE's source code on the source CD. They are well within their rights, because they comply to the GPL and LGPL.

No it isn't, because Redhat KDE packages are a pile of crap and never updated, even for security issues. This harms Redhat KDE users and reflects badly on the project as a whole. Obviously *you* don't care about that, but a lot of other people do.

The least Redhat could do is *contribute* decent packages and keep them up to date. Or not supply packages at all. Either would be better than the current situation.

while i'm not so sure that RH's intent is to destroy KDE, i can say that RH's treatment of KDE is very different than SuSe's or Mandrake's treatment of GNOME. both SuSe and MDK manage to put out quality releases of GNOME and keep up with the GNOME releases. RH manages to do neither of those things. and this isn't because they are inept at providing decent and updated packages for things they care about, they simply don't care about KDE.

at least SuSe and MDK show that they care about GNOME in that they give it fair and decent treatment. why? probably because they realize that many of their users appreciate decent GNOME packages and they try and give their customers what they want.

RH on the other hand, doesn't seem to count desktop users as people who matter and/or are more content to stay the corporate party line than support that which their customers use and want.

feel free to interpret how that reflects on the GNOME and KDE projects as a whole. (and it does, believe me. i know from listening to users of both desktops talk about it.)

> GNOME was founded to defeat KDE from the earliest Qt licensing complaints.

true, but no longer an issue since Qt is available through the GPL.

> RH climbed aboard with GNOME early, and funds a good deal of GNOME development.

Yup, RedHat has always historically preferred Free software to non, so they put their weight behind GNOME. Nowadays, who knows what they would have picked? Since they went with GNOME, RH's defaults have been GNOME from then on for historical reasons; they wanted the interface to be as familiar as possible to the existing userbase. This is (I believe) why RH's default gnome 1.2 and 1.4 desktops don't look like Ximian's, they were mimicing the look and feel that they had in earlier releases.

> RH pays not one developer to even package KDE.

Not true, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer (bero@redhat.com) maintains the RedHat KDE packages, and is under RedHat's employ.

last i checked SuSe had a couple (one works on German translation, another is a hacker, Martin Baulig i believe) and Mandrake has one or two as well. GNOME may not be their primary focus, but they ensure they have the man power and commitment not to make it a joke. this is good for the entire community since having a healthy GNOME around means competition, inspiration, choice and if needed a fallback position.

there are lessons to be learned here, Mr. Anon Man (if that really is your name ;) :

1) just because it works for you doesn't mean it isn't broken. when it works for everyone under sane conditions, *then* it isn't broken. "it works for me" doesn't hold water and isn't worth the web page it's written on. it's about three shades short of denial, really.

2) people want things that work, not things that will work. in fact, they get tired and annoyed of things that will work someday but never quite seem to get there. cf the enlightenment project.

3) nothing stands still. everything improves. and not just the system(s) you like to use: all systems with active development improve. they just do so at different paces. so choose your pony carefully based on pace of achievement, not based on promises.

4) bitching about who gets an award is about as useful as trying to hold back the tide: you can't, and it doesn't really care.

1)You base your comment that it is broken on one persons comment. That too, is a very short sighted view. There are many users who do use GARNOME with success. Unless one has tried it themself they cannot make a valid comment. I have tried it and it works flawlessly.

2)This is the reason why GNOME released 2.0 now before all apps were ported. There was a sense that comments would be made in the community that GNOME 2 would take too long. Now, the developers have an idea of what to work with and a system to integrate against.

3)Of course everything improves. I pointed out that GNOME 2 has improved tremendously as well. These are not 'promises'. If you take a look at the GNOME 2 versions of applications you will be pleasently surprised. They are very featureful, integrate well and are well designed in terms of usability. As more apps get ported and the developer support for GTK2 solidifies, this trend will increase.

4)If you see any evidence of 'bitching' I would be very confused. If you notice, I conceded the point to Tim, was extremely polite and asked him if he'd test the new version of Evolution. This is not bitching - it was a simple question.

1) of course if only one person can't get it to work, then the problem probably lies in not satisfying the "under sane conditions" requiremeent. but you simply countered with "it works for me", as do many others. in fact, it can work for a whole bunch of people and still have bugs that become show stoppers. take a look at the IMAP issues in KMail in the 3.0 release for an example of this. this is something of a basic fact of software development, and simply accusing those who can't get it to work for them of incompetance, not trying hard enough, or whatever else is lame and unhelpful to your project. your reply to point #1 merely demonstrates your general lack of understanding of this issue.

2) i'm quite happy that the GNOME team got a release out. i was begining to worry about it quite deeply as i believe that the friendly competition between GNOME and KDE is extremeley healthy for both. however, my point remains: if garnome or whatever other distribution mechanism of GNOME does not work reliably for the overwhelming majority of people who try it, it will be dismissed. on a related note, it seems that the longer people wait the more picky they become (i call it just being pissy ;-). this is probably why, at least in part, even though garnome works for you and your friends, it didn't make a showing in these awards.

3) "these are not promises" ... "as more apps get ported" ... "this trend will increase" ... hrm, perhaps you and i have different meanings of the word "promise". the point is that people can only use what is here now. and while project X is working to get there, project Y is already moving on. KDE faces this same issue w/respect to projects like MS Windows and Mac OSX.

4) there has been a lot of "bitching" here and elsewhere, as in "why wasn't my pet piece of software XYZ version 3.2 picked instead?!". i don't know if you are responsible for any of it, but the lesson is still there to be learned. complaining about who gets an award is rather futile.

You seem to be very defensive no? Since when did I "accuse" anyone of incompetance? Perhaps a quick word with Mr. Butler (to whom my points were raised) would enlighten you? Did he feel pressured by my questions? Did he feel that I was antagonistic? I suspect you will find the answer is in the negative. I think you will also find that in this conversation, it is you who are increasingly starting to use an antagonistic tone.

Where do you get this "overwhelming majority" 'fact'? I would like to see your source of data for this. My stating "it works for me" for not to dismiss his point of view - but to point out that others 'do' have it working. Otherwise 'facts' such as the 'garnome does not work reliably... for an overwhelming majority of users' becomes accepted without question by others reading this conversation. At least I am *only* speaking for myself. I am also not in the habit of hanging out with my 'friends' and trying out GARNOME until it works.

Actually, kudos to Mr. Butler, who maintained an open mind and showed his willingness to experiment again. Again, although I may disagree with him, I respect his opinion and his nature. I will look forward to reading his column in the future.

Actually, perhaps you should take a look at the GNOME cvs from time to time. I think you will find it illuminating. I do not say 'this app *will* be ported' I state 'this app is in *the process* of being ported'. Again, you speak of promises...I speak of events already in place. Again, you and I may disagree on this - but, I fear that this will be something that cannot be resolved.

Finally, I think you and I have a disconnect. You believe I should simply accept the opinion of others. I...do not. I asked Mr. Butler two questions as to why he considered KMail the superior client. He answered both. I conceded. I then asked him if he'd care to try again. He replied in the affirmative and we parted on amicable terms. If this is your definition of bitching...I honestly cannot do anything about it. It would be futlie to try and make you understand my mindset.

I am not in the habit of randomly complaining about software choices. Suffice it to say, I do have better things to do with my time. This time was an exception, because I was not sure as to the validity of the choice.

if by defensive you mean i don't agree with what you are saying, then yes.
but i do think you are applying a certain tone to my postings that isn't meant to be there, and you're taking a lot of it very personally when, as i stated in my original post in this thread, these are general lessons/points to learn from. all of us, not just you personally. my second posting was in reply to you, and it was more pointed because you utterly failed to grasp certain points by simply repeating yourself.

> Since when did I "accuse" anyone of incompetance?

it is a common saw, and one that was used elsewhere in response to these awards. if that one doesn't particularly apply to you, try the rest of the sentence: ", not trying hard enough, or whatever else".

> Where do you get this "overwhelming majority" 'fact'?

*sigh* that wasn't what i said. try reading the sentence again.

i said that if it doesn't work for the vast majority of people, it will be dismissed. i didn't say "it doesn't work for the majority of people", rather i was saying that just because it works for some or even most, it doesn't mean that people won't perceive a certain piece of software to be broken. in fact, the perception can be dead-on accurate even if it truly does work for most people. responding to "it's fragile/broken/doesn't work for me" with "but it works for some/most people" is fundamentally flawed. you couldn't understand why Timothy felt it broken enough not to rate 2nd place, i'm helping you understand the reasons why such a thing can occur. you don't have to accept it, but then again the future success of your software may depend upon it. you choose.

> You believe I should simply accept the opinion of others.

not at all. you should challenge what you disagree with. likewise, i don't have to simply accept your opinions either, and i think i've shown good reasons not to.

> Again, you speak of promises...I speak of events already in place.

in various replies you've talked about apps that will be ported, trends that will increase, file dialogs that will be made better. these are future efforts. but let's pretend all of this was finished in CVS right now. reality for software means that an end user can reach out and touch it. anything else doesn't matter. being on schedule for release in X months doesn't make something real. when it is released, it is real. real for whom? the users. because that's who matters. fact is, these things you talk about aren't done yet, so yes, right now they are promises: as in a commitment to accomplish something in the future tense.

> If this is your definition of bitching...I honestly cannot do
> anything about it.

hm. did you read my reply, or just every few words of it? please, re-read my point #4 above and try and understand what i was actually saying, to wit: a lot of people have moaned over the fact that their pet software wasn't chosen for an award. that complaining is pretty much useless. had it been one or two people who made the same rather hollow complaints (you yourself said you asked and were answered satisfactorily to the point of conceding) that would've been one thing, but everywhere this awards thing has been posted there have been a gaggle of GNOME users spouting the same lines. how about giving some props to your GAIM buddies instead? think about how much more positively that energy would've been spent?

if you want to continue this discussion, send me an email. you've got my address.

Aaron, your comments are reasonable, but I think you mistook some of my statements.

Earlier I stated "It worked for me" and you said that I simply 'countered' with that argument. Actually, if you take my sentence in context I stated that one cannot make an assumption as to the stability of the software unless one tried it out one's self.

Please keep in mind that moaning goes both ways. If a KDE program was knocked, especially if KDE users thought that it was the better program - we'd see trouble too. I think people (including me) were a bit confused. I took the step of asking why the decision was made.

I guess if we want to see all the user visible changes, we'll have to wait for GNOME 2.2. That's a "promise", nothing's in CVS yet :) However, keep in mind that GNOME 2.0 was widely stated as a developer's release.

This just general, but if you're not referring to me, please don't use "you", try "one" or some other general qualifier instead. I misunderstood your statements to refer solely to me and this led to my reply.

fair enough. so we've established that neither of us are mind readers ;-)

> if you take my sentence in context I stated that one cannot make an
> assumption as to the stability of the software unless one tried it
> out one's self.

one can see how others have faired and play by the odds, though. ;-) you are correct in saying that you won't know how well it will perform for you on your machine with your set up unless you try it. the trick is to get people to try it. having people report less than optimal experiences isn't how to do that.

the GNOME project has some serious PR issues to take care of in the wake of GNOME2: it was later and less than what many of the users wanted and that has resulted in less hoopla than it probably could've used. i hope that the GNOME devels listen well to Havoc when he writes about releasing often and on time. this is probably the only way to get the codebase in order and keep users happy. this strategy has worked quite well for KDE and its users and developers, and it isn't like every KDE release has been exactly perfect.

it simply means that there are less changes (and therefore less things to go wrong) in each release, the users' attention is kept, progress is easy to see for both users and developers (moral is huge for open projects), and problems can (and do) get fixed quickly and pushed out to the users.

> If a KDE program was knocked, especially if KDE users thought
> that it was the better program

Listen to Havoc and turn your favorite project into a political nonsense game. Hold meaningless weekly "meetings" and vote on your favorite foundation "issues" while just about nothing gets done. Make yourself the envy of the bestest commercial company.